should australian towns buy back their grid

Are Australians having a gut full of the incumbents?

Last week, the state-owned network operators in NSW revealed they had doubled their profits in the past year, skimming a profit of around $350 per customer. The profit margin of the big network operators in NSW accounted for 15 per cent of an average customer’s bill – that’s more than carbon price and renewable incentives combined.

In Queensland, there is a similar margin of profit, at least for the south-east Queensland network operator Energex. The question is now being asked by some communities, and some townships: Are we better off owning the networks ourselves, and directing excess earnings to local needs? And who will be the first in Australia to develop a not-for-profit network operator?

Australian communities are not alone in wondering whether network operations are best served by big corporations, or local co-operatives, particularly given the boom in rooftop solar, and the so-called democratisation of energy. In Germany, local communities are buying back the grid by the hundreds, to make sure that they operate to the benefit of the customers, and to remove the single biggest impediment to the rollout of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures. In the US, the city of Boulder recently voted to do the same.

Read on!

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/should-australian-towns-buy-back-their-grids-75269